We ventured down to Mentone Grammar today to play Old Mentonians who we had drawn to in our first game at Kingston Heath. The rain had fallen steadily for 16 hours and the ground was slippery plus what made matters worse was that we had a turf pitch in the middle which made it impossible to try to play good football.
We started off okay but after 6 minutes we allowed an uncontested corner and we were 1-0 down. What a frustrating start. We have too many folks who just hesitate and don't commit to the ball. We had trouble all day where we watched or just were slow to react.
We kept working forward and found Lachy out wide who beat his player and scored inside the keeper. This was after a series of misses from right out in front or from headers that we just missed. Deni was playing well and Adam was giving us a target up front. Dale was getting plenty of the ball as was Tucci and McCarthy. Lucas and Adam got better as the first half progressed and Connor and Tom were making plenty of runs.
We went in at half time totally dissatisfied with our efforts and our defense was really not playing good defensive football. Now dont get me wrong - our full backs are doing well and attacking well - but when it comes to defending - we struggle.
After the half we were more determined and we increased our possession and played no nonsense football in the tough conditions. Connor ran down and showed a cool head to beat two or three players to lay the ball back for Tucci who slammed in our number 2 goal. The game see-sawed and we both had chances. Mentone just missed theirs but we seemed to keep kicking the ball directly to the keeper.
We made some changes and Deni and Adam and Dale came in for rests. We put in Kurtis, Dipper and Luke Dal and back to work we went. It was good to see the defense finally adjust to the opponents long ball flick on and we started to attack more. With 15 minutes left Dipper rose high for a header and scored a brilliant goal to make it 3-1.
We were overjoyed because goals were hard to come by but still had 15 left. We had chances to extend and they had near misses too. It was tight and the referee decided to extend the game by another 7 minutes. The contest ended near dark and we were victorious.
Best players - Michael McCarthy, Michael Tucci, Lachy Davies, Tom Flavelle
The other good news is that Baxter drew to Pakenham today and now we await the verdict of the tribunal as Baxter appeal the 16 week bans they got two weeks ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment